We Hardly Knew Ye Dept.

First-term Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minn) will not seek re-election, opening up the possibility of two Republican senators from the North Star State and finally allowing the DFL party to live up to its acronym.

"Everything I've worked for and everything I believe in depends upon this Senate seat remaining in the Democratic caucus in 2007," Dayton says. "I do not believe that I am the best candidate to lead the DFL party to victory next year… I cannot stand to do the constant fundraising necessary to wage a successful campaign. And I cannot be an effective senator while also being a nearly full-time candidate. Plus, I choose to devote all of my time and energy to the job Minnesotans elected me to do."

Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has been given the royal order of the boot. Fiorina made no statement. During her rocky tenure at HP, she oversaw the company's acquisition of Compaq, a move panned by Wall Street and supposedly loathed by employees. According to Forbes.com, one disgruntled employee wrote to the site: "Carly Fiorina has lost the people of HP. She is reviled, despised and unwelcome in the company. The vast majority of HP people wouldn't follow her to a new restaurant, much less through a gut-wrench merger." (Full disclosure: I was never more than 74 percent satisfied with my HP Pavilion laptop, though the company did repair a keyboard malfunction that started three weeks after the warrantee expired.)

Finally, Karl Rove has been promoted to deputy chief of staff.

In 2003, John J. Pitney reviewed two Rove bios for Reason.